Usage instruction

Introduction

WatchBot picks some interesting FICS games, observes them, and saves
the games for future reference. It`s main purpose is to preserve
the comments made during the game (whisper-s and kibitz-es).

The saved games may be reviewed using the web interface, or
obtained by email as PGN files.

Typical usage

In most cases one does not need to do anything to use WatchBot. Just
play interesting game, and WatchBot will pick it. If it happens that
people observing the game (or your opponent) are making some comments,
after the game is finished you receive message like:

Do exactly that - either use mailgame command to receive email
with PGN game score, or open the link in your browser to replay the
game. In some clients (like BabasChess) it should suffice to click
the command or link, in others you may need to copy and paste the
text or link.

Note that to use mailgame you must inform WatchBot about your
email address. To do it, issue command like

Which games are watched

There are some blitz games in this database, those are either
caught by mistake, or gathered during testing.

As WatchBot is able to observe only about 25 games simultaneously, and
there are usually more standard games in progress on FICS, it uses
some kind of scoring to pick the most interesting games. Exact
details of the algorithm change from time to time, but in general:

the slower the game, the more interesting it is,

the higher rating of the players, the better,

games with clocks 45+45 and 60+15 obtain additional plus,

games between computers are avoided and games between human and
computer are considered to be less interesting than games between
humans.

In practice, games with slow controls are almost always watched,
faster standards may be watched or not, depending on the players
rating, exact clock, and other games in progress.

Command list

WatchBot handles some commands. All those commands are issued via
FICS tells. For example, to issue mygames command, type the
following in your console window: